This last week or two has been both good and bad in terms of money matters and art.

On a positive note, I got two unexpected royalty cheques from my German publishers which, although not a large sum of money, was welcome and paid an unexpected bill.

On the negative side, funding fell through for a film project that is already underway, providing much stress and frantic rejigs in terms of schedules (both mine and other peoples) and a minor panic over time that has possibly been wasted and the knock on effects that will have when I try to get people on board in future. So far, people have been good about it, understanding even. After all, these things happen. But oh, does it make me feel like shit.

To top things off, my laptop has decided that Windows 8 is useless (like the rest of us) and has decided to stop working, freezing on the Aptio settings screen and meaning I will have to do a full reboot this evening in order to be able to do some actual work. Thankfully my lovely brother and uncle between themselves and the power of Google, seem to have the necessary expertise to fix it.

In the meantime, following a week of stress, on going ill health and some pretty interesting events over the weekend (more on that later) Mum has poured us a sneaky rum and coke while we watch my father and assorted male relatives burn stuff on the BBQ.